The Gunman's Bride

He studied her feet as she peeled away her stockings. There had been a time when she would let him hold those feet, rub away their tiredness, kiss each tender pink toe. Her black dress puddled to the floor and a soft white ruffle-hemmed gown took its place, skimming over her pretty ankles.

She began to hum, and Bart worked his shoulders across the hard floor in hope of a better look. The thought of dying this close to his Rosie without ever really seeing her face again sent an ache through him. He tilted his head so the pink quilt covered just one eye and left the other exposed.

Her back turned to him, she sat on a chair, let down her hair and began to pull a brush from the dark chocolate roots to the sun-lightened cascade that fell past her waist and over her hips. “Forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty,” she counted in a soft voice.

She swung the mass of hair across her shoulders and began to brush the other side. “Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three…”

She had put her feet into a basin of water while she worked on her hair, and Bart could see those bare ankles again. He shut his eyes, swallowing the lump that rose in his throat at the memory of the first time he’d caught a glimpse of Rosie’s feet.

They had been down at the swimming hole where he and his stepbrothers liked to fool around. But this was a chilly autumn afternoon, and Bart’s stepbrothers were nowhere in sight. Rosie had agreed to meet him at the swimming hole, and he’d been waiting for her like a horse champing at the bit.

When she finally came, she was full of silliness and laughter, her head tilted back and her brown eyes shining at him with all the love in the world. She had dropped down onto the grassy bank, unlaced her boots and taken off her stockings. Then, while he held his breath, she had lifted the hem of her skirt and waded right into the icy pool.

Hoo-ee, how he had stared at those pale curvy legs and those thin little ankles. She hadn’t known, of course, what havoc her childlike impulse wreaked in his heart. His prim, sweet Rosie was the essence of innocence.

Under the bed, Bart suppressed the urge to chuckle at the memory of her sauntering back onto the bank, pulling up her stockings and lacing her boots—annoyed that he had not joined her in the water, and unaware of the reasons why he couldn’t trust himself.

They had sat together in silence for such a long time that Bart had begun to fear she really was mad at him. So he did the only thing he could think of—he grabbed her, kissed her right on the mouth, and then ran off lickety-split like the devil was after him.

“Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred,” Rosie said now from the chair. She lifted her feet out of the water and dried them with a cotton towel. She checked the bolt on her door and tested the window latch before crossing to the wardrobe. Breathing heavily, she jerked open the door. After a moment she shut it again and let out yet another sigh.

“Dear God,” she said, dropping to her knees beside the bed, “please watch over me tonight. I’m so scared. Don’t let Bart be out there, dear Lord. Please don’t let that horrible killer be my Bart.”

She was silent for a long time, and under the bed Bart held his breath. Eyes squeezed shut, he found himself praying along with her, as if he could will away the truth: Don’t let me be that Bart, dear Lord. Please don’t let me be that killer they’re after.

“Dear God, please help me to like Etta as much as she likes me,” Rosie prayed on. “Give me patience, and please don’t let her blabber the things I told her tonight. Bless Pappy, but don’t let him find me—not until I’ve started teaching school and gotten myself established here in town with a house and enough money so I can keep him from hauling me back to Kansas City. Bless…bless Dr. Lowell and help him to understand why I never could be a good wife to him.”

Bart’s eyes flew open. Dr. Lowell’s wife? But she was married to Bart Kingsley! Could she have married another man, too? Or been engaged to him? She was Rosie—his Rosie!

“Forgive me, Father, for my sins. My many sins,” she murmured in a voice so low that Bart could hardly hear it. She sniffled as she spoke, her voice tight with suppressed tears. “And please take care of Bart. Amen.”

The bed creaked as she climbed into it. Lying underneath, Bart heard her sniffling. She hadn’t yet blown out the lamp on her dressing table, and Bart studied her shadow on the opposite wall as she twisted the coverlet in her hands.

He felt sick. Dizzy with loss of blood. And knotted up inside like a tangled vine. Had Rosie promised to marry someone else? Had she actually gone through with it? How long had it been? Why hadn’t his half brother told him?

Some other man had touched his Rosie! How could she have gone and gotten engaged or married to another man when she knew good and well she was already married to him? He had the license to prove it! He wanted to shake it in front of her face and shout, Why? Why, Rosie?

But she could simply throw his question back. Why, Bart? Why did you run off and leave me? Why is the sheriff hunting for you? Why did you kill and rob and throw in with a gang of outlaws? Why, Bart?

He heard her breathing grow steady, her tossing ease and the bed cease to groan. He touched his side and found that blood had finally begun to clot over the ragged, burned hole in his skin. He had to get out from under the bed, and soon. He couldn’t go much longer without water.

Should he slip out the window and hope the posse had given up hunting for the night? Should he leave Rosie sleeping, never to know the cause of the bloodstain on her pink hooked rug?

He ran a dry tongue over his lower lip. Quietly, he began to shrug his shoulders across the wood floor and out from under the bed. The pain in his side flared, movement relighting a fire inside his gut. Clenching his teeth, he scooted his hips clear of the iron bed, then dragged his legs out into the open.

The world swung like a bucking bronco as he rose onto his elbows. Dizzy, he shook his head, but the fog refused to roll back. Fighting to keep silent, he rolled up onto his knees. His breath came in hoarse gasps.

There she was! His beautiful Rosie, sleeping like an innocent babe in her bed of pink. She was prettier than ever. Rounded cheekbones, delicate nose, full lips barely parted.

Grabbing his side, he tried to haul himself to his feet. The floor swayed out from under him, the lamplight tilting crazily. He groaned, caught the bed rail, felt the iron frame jolt at his weight. Rosie’s eyes drifted open, focused and jerked wide. She sucked in a breath just as he clamped his hand over her mouth.

“Don’t scream, Rosie,” he croaked as the bed seemed to turn on its side and his feet began to drift on cotton clouds. “Don’t scream, Rosie, Please. It’s me. Bart.”

Her skin and lips melted under his palm as black curtains fell across his vision.

“Bart!” he heard her gasp. Then the curtains wrapped over his head, and his feet floated out from under him. He tumbled like a falling oak tree across his Rosie’s soft body.

Chapter Two

Faster than a cat with its tail afire, Rosie pulled herself out from under the deadweight of the unconscious man. She grabbed the oil lamp from the dressing table across the room and nearly doused its flame as she swung back to the bed to take a closer look.

Clamping a trembling hand over her open mouth to keep from crying out, she studied the intruder. He wore leather boots caked with dried mud. Two six-shooters and an arsenal of cartridges hung on belts at his waist. He lay face down, his nose pressed into a rumple of pink quilt. Every breath he took sounded like a distant train engine as the air struggled in and out of his lungs.

Eyes focused on him, Rosie reached for the pistol Etta had held earlier that evening. The heavy metal felt reassuring, and she hugged it close. Bart, the man had called himself. And he had known her name—her real name!

But this shaggy bear draped over her bed couldn’t possibly be the Bart she once knew. She lifted the lamp until its yellow glow spread down his entire length. No, she thought with relief, this certainly wasn’t her Bart. Her Bart had been much shorter. This man more than filled up the bed. Her Bart had been as lanky as a colt, but the stranger’s weight made the metal bed frame bend toward the middle.

Certainly her Bart would never have let his shiny black hair get into such a state as this. The tangled mop that covered his broad shoulders couldn’t have been washed in months. His bloodstained buckskin jacket and faded trousers looked as though the man never took them off. No wonder her room had smelled so odd. Who knew how long this great malodorous hulk of an outlaw had been hiding under her bed?

Shivering, Rosie wondered what on earth she was going to do with him. If he regained consciousness, she wouldn’t stand a chance against such a brute.

“Okay, mister,” she said, jamming the pistol barrel against his skull. “I’ve got you now, you hear?”

He didn’t budge.

What if he were dead? A dead man, right on her very own bed! Swallowing, she bent toward him to listen for the ragged breathing that had sounded so loud only moments before.

“Rosie…” The moan came from deep inside his chest.

“Don’t move!” she cried out. “I have a gun, and I’ll use it.”

A muffled groan welled out of him. “Rosie? Rosie…help me.”

Her hand shook as she brushed a hank of hair from his face. “Oh, dear God, please don’t let this be happening,” she mouthed in a desperate prayer.

But there was no mistaking the angle of the man’s high cheekbone or the smooth plane of golden skin that sheered down from it. Rosie knew those lips, that jutted chin. No doubt about it. The man on her bed was Bart Kingsley. And yet he couldn’t be. This was a huge shaggy outlaw with a bullet in his side. This man was wanted for murder.

Then he opened his eyes. Green eyes, shot with golden threads, just as she remembered. “Bart?”

“Where are you, girl?” Grimacing, he lifted his head. “Rosie, I think I’m gonna die.”

Rosie carried a glass of water from the washstand and knelt at Bart’s side. His mouth felt like a dry creek bed, parched and sandy. Somehow she had known.

“I gotta turn over,” he whispered. “Help me, Rosie.”

She let out a breath. “Raise your shoulders if you can.”

“Tarnation,” he muttered through clenched teeth as she helped him up onto one elbow. He grabbed at his side. “Hurts like the devil.”

“Hush your cussing and drink this.” She sat on the bed beside him.

Pain ripping through his gut, Bart took a sip and then fell back. “Blast that Pinkerton son of a—”

Rosie clamped a hand over his mouth. “You stop swearing this minute, Bart Kingsley!” she snapped. “You’re turning the air in my room blue. You never used to talk like this.”

No, he hadn’t always cussed. There had been a time when he hardly said a word, bottling his frustration, anger and rage deep inside. But if he hadn’t allowed himself to swear, neither had he permitted the good words inside to come out. Now all he could think about was how much he wanted to tell Rosie what it meant to see her again. How beautiful she looked. How black the years without her had been. How soft her long hair was as it brushed against his hand.

“Bad enough you had to sneak in here and bleed all over everything, and stink like a pair of old leather shoes and scare me half out of my wits…”

Her admonitions trailed off as he slid his hand down her arm. Oh, but she smelled good, he thought as he pressed his lips lightly into her palm.

With a squeak of dismay, she snatched her hand away. “What are you doing here, Bart? Nobody passes through Raton, New Mexico, but miners and homesteaders. And how did you come to climb in my window and hide under my bed?”

Eyes shut, he forced down deep breaths. “I came looking for you, Rosie. I tracked you here.”

“But I changed my name!”

“Kingsley?”

“It was all I could think of when I applied for the Harvey job. I was scared about running away. I had planned everything down to the last detail, but when the recruiter asked my name, I went blank and just blurted it out.”

“It is your name. Laura Rose Kingsley.”

“Stop that!” She pushed him away and stood with her arms crossed. “I have a good mind to call for the sheriff this minute.”

“No, Rosie! They’ll haul me back to Missouri and hang me.”

“The law should hang you if you’ve done all the wicked things Sheriff Bowman told Etta and me tonight. You rode with Jesse James. You robbed banks and trains, stole cattle and horses, killed people.”

“I’m no stock rustler.”

“Oh, that’s a relief!” She glared down at him. “You don’t look a thing like you used to.”

“It’s been six years. I grew up.”

“You grew up into a gunman. An outlaw.”

He closed his eyes. Rosie was right, of course. He’d grown into a man, and he’d done everything he was accused of—except rustling livestock.

The James brothers had a policy against that. Their grievance wasn’t with small-time Southern farmers and ranchers. No, Jesse, Frank, and the others set their sights on northern banks and trains. Trained by Charley Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson, they had served as guerrilla raiders until the end of the war.

But when the rest of the Confederate guerrillas returned to their homes and farms, the James brothers and their pals, the Youngers, elected to continue raiding. Others joined along the way, men who came and went as part of the gang during its sixteen-year reign.

Bart swallowed against the knot of regret in his throat. He had known every one of the fringe members of the James-Younger gang—most of them killed by lawmen or captured and lynched. Others were serving time in prison or, like him, hoping to escape the law.

The men had accepted a half-breed homeless boy when no one else would. They fed him, boarded down with him at night, saw to it that he had clothes and boots…and guns. They taught him to shoot and let him join them playing checkers, swimming in the river, hunting deer and squirrels. Oh, they had a fine time, Bart and the boys.

Until the day that was burned into his memory like none other: October 7, 1879. Glendale, Missouri. The Chicago & Alton train.

Bart opened his eyes, knowing that light always erased the haunting blackness of his past. And there was his Rosie, gazing down on him with her velvet eyes.

“Rosie,” he whispered, hardly able to believe he had found her at last. Porcelain skin, delicate cheekbones, lips the color of roses. Rosie, his prim-and-proper, educated, high-society lady. Rosie, his tree-climbing, pond-wading, horse-riding love. His Rosie.

“You’re going to have to leave,” she said abruptly. “I’ll help you to the window.”

But she didn’t move, and he couldn’t stop staring at her.

“If I leave, the detective will find me,” he murmured.

“I suppose he will.”

“He’ll take me back to Missouri. I won’t get a fair trial. Not a half breed like me.”

Her brown eyes deepened. “If you did, would you be cleared? You robbed trains.”

“I was following orders. Jesse’s plan, his guns, his horses.”

“You killed people.”

“People who were trying to kill me first.”

“Bart, how could you? You used to be so kind.”

“Rosie.” He reached for her arm, grasped her hand. “Let me stay here tonight. I’ll leave tomorrow.”

“You can’t stay in my room.” She jerked away. “Etta fetches me in the morning, and she’ll know at once. Mrs. Jensen will faint if she hears even a rumor of you. I’ll lose my job.”

“Please, Rosie. Don’t turn me out.”

Opening the heavy lid of her trunk, Rosie took out the bag of pills, lotions and cures she had brought from her home in Kansas City. Pappy always kept an ample supply of medicines on hand in case he had to leave the house to tend someone in the middle of the night. She had decided the medicines might be of use in Raton—though she hadn’t needed them until this night.

Don’t turn me out. If Bart had said anything else, she would have forced him to the window at gunpoint and made him climb right out into the cold. But how could she turn him out? The Bart Kingsley she knew had been turned out far too often in his life.

Taunted by the farmhands. Beaten, whipped and burned by his stepfather. Neglected by his own mother. He wore ragged clothes and boots that pinched his toes and rubbed blisters on his heels. In the winter he had no coat. In the summer he had no hat. The schoolmarm refused to allow him into her classroom. The preacher made him sit outside on the church steps to hear the sermon.

No, Rosie knew she couldn’t turn him out. Not tonight. Once the decision had been made, there was nothing left but to treat the awful wound in his side.

“You’d better take one of these liver pills,” Rosie said, carrying her stash of Dr. Vermillion’s medicines to the bedside. “Only the good Lord knows where that bullet is.”

Though Dr. Lowell had been her fiancé for three long years, Rosie recalled, she had never gotten past calling the man by his formal title. He kept daytime office hours and never saw patients at home. It was the new way of practicing medicine, he had told her.

She helped Bart lift his head to swallow the tiny brown pill, followed by a teaspoon of Dr. Hathaway’s Blood Builder.

“Where did you get this nasty stuff, Rosie?” he asked with a grimace as she poured a spoonful of something black. He swallowed and nearly gagged. “I’ll be horse-whipped if that doesn’t taste like a—”

“Don’t you swear, Bart. I mean it.” She drew back the edge of his jacket and caught her breath. “You need a doctor!”

“No, I can’t do that.”

“It’s a mess, and I don’t know the first thing about nursing. I’ve got to get this jacket off. I’ll fetch my scissors.”

“Don’t cut it!” He grabbed a handful of nightgown to stop her. “This is all I’ve got, Rosie. I’ll work it off, just give me a minute.” Releasing her gown, he began to shrug his shoulders and arms out of the buckskin jacket.

His face was beaded with perspiration from the effort, and she bent over him to help pull away the garment. The scent of woodsmoke and leather clung to his skin. She wished it were unpleasant, but the smell stirred something deep inside her. A memory. A trace of pleasure. Although she tried to keep from touching him, the effort was hopeless, and she ended up wrestling his big shoulders and long arms out of the sleeves.

“There!” she said, letting out a breath as he collapsed. “You don’t even have on a shirt! Oh, good heavens, when was the last time you took this off?”

With two fingers she carried the bloody jacket across the room and dropped it into a basket in the corner. It would likely fall apart after a good scrubbing with lye soap. At least the hole ought to be mended. There wouldn’t be time for any of that, of course, not with Bart leaving first thing in the morning.

She glanced over her shoulder to find him breathing deeply, his eyes shut and his huge chest filling her narrow bed from one side to the other. When did he get to be so big?

She poured water into her basin and carried it to the bed. When she sat down beside him, his green eyes opened—reminding her that even though he didn’t look like her Bart or act like her Bart, he was her Bart.

“Now bite your tongue,” she told him. “And don’t you dare start cussing at me.”

She dipped a towel in the water and blotted his skin.

Dear Lord, she breathed up in prayer as she studied the damage, don’t let him die on me. Much as I’ve wanted to kill this man, please keep him alive.

“How’s it look?” he grunted.

“Terrible.”

“Can you feel the bullet?”

“Feel it? I’m not sticking my finger in there!”

“Rosie, it’s not coming out unless someone takes it out. And if you don’t patch up the hole, I’m liable to bleed to death. I reckon if you’d do that for me, I wouldn’t ever ask another thing of you.”

“Why should I trust a murdering outlaw?” she asked.

“Especially one who ran off two weeks after he married her,” Bart finished.

“We never were married,” she said softly as she rummaged through the bag. “You said so yourself.”

“You found the note?”

“Of course I did.” Wishing he hadn’t brought up their impetuous wedding, she set the lamp on a table near the bed. If only he hadn’t tracked her down. If only he hadn’t crawled into her bedroom all shot up. Now she was stuck with him. But only until morning.

Before she could begin, he caught her hand and held it to his chest. “Rosie,” he whispered, his eyes depthless. “Thank you, Rosie-girl.”

“You won’t be thanking me in a minute.” She focused on the tweezers in her bag. How could it be that his gaze drew her back through time with an ache that wouldn’t go away—in spite of everything she knew about him?

She had to concentrate. Bart had lost so much blood. As she dipped the tweezers into the wound, she felt his hand slide into her hair. Eyes squeezed shut, he arched back in pain. His hand closed over a hank of her hair and she could feel him working it between his fingers.

Running a dry tongue over her lips, Rosie centered her attention on the wound again. She moved the tweezers deeper, then wiped the blood with a towel. Nothing. Where could the bullet be? She worked the tool farther in. Suddenly his hand clamped over hers, squeezing hard.

“Bart!” she gasped, jerking out the tweezers.

“Rosie, we were married,” he murmured. “We were.”

“I can’t find the bullet.”

“You were my Rosie,” he whispered, relaxing his hand. His fingers moved through the hair at her temple. “Once you were my Rosie-girl.”

She closed her eyes, fighting tears. His fingertips stroked across the down on her cheek, feathering her skin. A finger traced the arch of her eyebrow. Another found her eyelid and rested lightly there a moment before fanning down to her lashes and cheek.

“Remember how you shinnied down the oak tree by your bedroom window that night?” he was saying, his voice almost inaudible. “We ran through the fields to Reverend Russell’s place? You wore a white dress and lilacs in your hair. The reverend was drunk as usual, but we hardly noticed because we were so scared and excited to get married and—”

“No!” She pushed his hand away. “It was only a game, Bart. We were children. You said so yourself.”

Leaving him, she hurried to the wash stand, rinsed the tweezers and fumbled the medicines into the bag. Six years ago she had convinced herself that she had never married Bart Kingsley. No one knew except her pappy—and neither of them had ever mentioned his name again.

The disaster had been put away like one of Pappy’s old textbooks. Hidden on a back shelf. Forgotten. Denied so completely that Pappy had arranged for Rosie to marry Dr. William Lowell. Denied so totally that she had silently submitted, as she always did, to Pappy. Denied so thoroughly, that every night when she lay in Dr. Lowell’s bed in his big fancy house, she didn’t give Bart Kingsley a thought.

She didn’t remember the way he had held her hand, gently weaving his fingers through hers. She didn’t remember how he had touched her face, his green eyes memorizing every feature as though it were precious beyond belief. She didn’t remember his mouth moving against hers, his lips tender and his breath ragged.

“Rosie,” he said from the bed.

She stiffened, unable to look at him.

“I don’t play games, Rosie. You know I never have.”

“You’d better get some sleep, Bart. You’ll need it to climb out that window in the morning.”

She rinsed her hands in clean water, then she stepped to the wardrobe for a cotton petticoat she had brought from Kansas City. The strips of clean white fabric would make a good bandage. As she ripped the cloth, she resolved that Bart was part of her past and he must stay that way. Come sunup, he would be back in the past where he belonged.